Photo Lyne. Hemme and I decided over coffee Saturday morning that our best chances for the most aggressive rider award would be to stop and get custom Louisville Slugger baseball bats and carry them with us to the line and take out our competition.  Julie confirmed that there is not a rule agains starting with one.  As we know, we didn't have time for that extra stop.  What has seemed like weeks of rain in Chicago really didn't spare the Ohio River Valley setting the weekends' course to be a power sucking tacky speed fest.  The course in Louisville is so packed full of features it doesn't leave much time to think about how much pain you are in though.

We got to the course with plenty of time to pre-ride and get a snack in as well.  It seemed like the rain was going to hold off for the day and what started as a cold, grey, windy day turned into a very nice sunny afternoon for the elite men and women.  How that changed the course was significant.  The early racers had paid their homage and set things up for some fantastic conditions.  The start straight is a super fast pavement straight into a sweeping left hander; it was the first time I really smelled that melting carbon last year.  The course then led out though a muddy ditch, over some barriers, through some sand pits, through a swamp of mud, through some more sand, more pasty mud, up some railroad ties, even more mud, up the green monster fly over and then one last 30 yards of the most sticky slow mud before launching onto to final straight.  The course had everything and waiting for the gun I knew it was going to be some fun racing.  With number 35 pinned to my back, I really was not expecting much better than that at the finish line.

I had a pretty good start, but it was not anything fantastic.  It was good enough however to move me up into the mid-twenties.  And this kind of is a first for me.  Maybe it was because the course was so consuming.  It could be because I was enjoying myself too much.  But I don't remember the race very well.  I do know I was battling it out with one dude for a huge part of the race and that he got me in the sprint.  And I do remember picking some guys off as they faded.  The specifics though, they are not there.  I heard some inappropriate things from the pit.  There were people cheering for me everywhere.  The one thing I remember was my small crash.

Going through the muddy ditches on one of the really early laps, I got pushed into the fencing.  The wooden post didn't move and I went over the bars hard.  The announcer saw it and said that I went head over heels.  I was laying on the ground wincing and everyone was shouting for me to get back up and on the wheel.  As I wiggled to my feet, I must have mumbled much louder than I realized.  When I said, "I smashed one of my nuts" everyone kinda went hysterical with laughter.  If I can't win these things I might as well make the crowd laugh.  A quick bike swap and I was back in it.

Any way I look at it I was super happy and almost, dare I say proud of mysellf, for the 23rd place finish.  Top 25 in a USGP Elite field was way above my expecations and it felt great to put in a hard days effort.  I knew immediatly following the race though, the second day was going to be very, very hard.

These travelling weekends just keep getting better and better. A huge thank you to Greg Heck and his aunt for putting us up.  Julie made the bikes run flawlessly this week after bringing them home to her completely wrecked.  The MyWifeInc. crew adds the love.  Camp fire with Kery way to late into Sunday morning was a highlight as well.  Seeing Devon, the Vanilla Boys and; well shit, more people than I can count or name again.  Racing doesn't make these weekends, the people we see and talk to make it worth it.  It feels good to be carving my notch into my space of the elite field, but the friends we are making, it makes the pain of the race fade in my memory and is overshadowed by everything else.